


Love and understanding

by hit_the_books



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Past Domestic Violence, Protective Siblings, Reader-Insert, Vampires, Winchester Sister
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 23:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5434631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hit_the_books/pseuds/hit_the_books
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saving Dean and Sam's hides is a regular occurrence for you. But during one vampire hunt, it's you--their Boo--who needs Sammy and Dee's help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love and understanding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [booty_25](https://archiveofourown.org/users/booty_25/gifts).



> This is a request fic for deanies-weenies who won "They Ate My Tailor! Award - best URL" in my [Tumblr 300 followers awards](http://dreamsfromthebunker.tumblr.com/post/130645202330/this-has-been-my-first-ever-tumblr-awards-having).
> 
> Original request:  
>  _Winchester little sister figure needs calming down after an anxiety/panic attack._

Broken moonlight shone through wrecked shutters, white paint peeling. Dust--thick and old, a light dirty brown--rested upon the floorboards, window sills, banisters and stairs. It rose up into the musty air in thick clouds with each carefully placed footfall. Wood moved and groaned under each booted step. The house was empty, had been for decades, ever since one, long bloody night.

Dean, flashlight aloft, led the three of you deeper into the former home of the Cartwrights. Occupants zero. Or so had been the belief of all who neighbored it until four of those neighbors had been found dead in their homes. Blood exsanguination according to the coroner's reports. There just happened to be a lot of bite marks on the bodies. Just happened to be…

A board creaked ahead of Dean and he held his left fist up, torch shifted, to signal for you all to stop. His right hand reached for the machete he had sheathed at his hip and he carefully pulled out the massive blade. Sam and you did the same.

Everything was quiet, practiced. The choreography a familiar pattern of movements teasing your bodies through the house. Another board creaked and the three of you drifted to a stop, eyes and ears scanning the dead space. Tracking your beam of light across crumbling plaster you paused, framing a streak of blood that glistened where it had no right to be. Rationally you knew what it was that you hunted, but you only thought about how to kill it. Thinking about what you should do.

A shift of shadow to your right sent you spinning on the spot, torch and blade raised. Sam and Dean shouted orders, but their voices were like a conversation being heard through ear plugs: deep rumbles and nothing else. Muscles tensed inside you at the sight of glinting white teeth that looked so pointy and sharp you could almost imagine them shredding through a whole cow with ease, let alone a person.

Time began to crawl the microsecond your right arm muscles reacted to the instinct to fight, to strike and cleave. Too sharp teeth surged towards you and your chance to win, to not fall, was slim. The machete blade lurched downwards in front of you as if travelling through molasses, while the sharp teeth were like piranha swimming swiftly in fresh water. Your heart skipped a beat, the rest of you unsure if you were about to be devoured.

The teeth came closer and it almost seemed too late, and then your blade cut keenly into the dead flesh of the creature and took its head clean off. Its mouth contorted in a scream that never sounded. A cruel familiarity to the shape yanked out of you memories you didn’t want. Your skill and confidence crumbled into dust like the plaster on the walls.

Unaware of the bodies around you, no knowledge of their fate, your feet carried you out of the dance and to a still resting spot.

Sat down on the creaking wooden floorboards, it was once the kitchen, you wrapped your arms around yourself and rocked--hoping it would stop. Adrenaline surged through your body, but left you high and dry, because the thing was gone. No need to fight. No need to run. Dimly aware of Sam and Dean taking care of business--of the other vampire--you remained where you were, breaths short and fast. _Can’t do this, please, no, can’t. Sammy, Dee…_

Your spiraling panic claimed you. Sam and Dean found you.

“Hey, Boo, we’re here, we’ve got you.” Dean’s hands found your shoulders and held them gently. “Look at me.”

Focusing your vision, you looked into Dean’s green eyes.

“Can you breathe with us?” Sam asked. You felt his body beside yours--a hand joining Dean’s, the weight reassuring.

The two of them breathed with you, like they had done so many times before and you followed their lead. Your confidence had turned to guilt and was laid on the rotting floorboards, thick like the dust. Each breath felt like it was sucking in your shame. Even though you had done well, had taken one out and then gotten out of danger when it became too much. Had followed John’s training to the best of your ability.

But the way its mouth had-- your mind began to play it again and it felt like you were looking down on the three of you. The room crawled further and further away.

“Breathe, Boo, breathe,” Sam encouraged. “Stay with us.” Sam’s breaths worked to rally yours. “You’re doing so good for us.”

“I want you to slowly count backwards from 100,” Dean asked, voice not far from the tone he once used to sing lullabies.

_100, 99, 98--_

“Out loud.” Dean squeezed your shoulder.

“Ninety-seven… ninety-six…”

Stretching up, Sam regained his feet and quietly left. You ignored the shuffling and thudding sounds deeper into the house. Refused to acknowledged what the sounds might be--you concentrated on your counting and breathing.

“I am so proud of what you did back there,” Dean reassured.

Dean’s eyes would not leave your own, his breaths continuing to match yours. No judgement entered his gaze, only love and understanding. He and Sam both knew how your mother had died. That sometimes the tiniest thing could send you back to those moments. It hadn’t been vampires. Nothing supernatural. Just the wrong man who had entered your mom’s life after John Winchester’s destructive destiny had taken him away. John wasn’t your father, but there had been one long month where it had looked like he wouldn’t have minded it.

“Forty-one… forty…” You counted down, breathing gradually returning to normal. You counted down all the the way to zero and when you reached it, you felt better, but the unpleasant sensation of misused adrenaline weighed your down your limbs. Dean had to help you regain your feet and gently ease you outside.

The three of you finally emerged from the house as the pinkish haze of dawn blossomed on the horizon. All remaining members of the Cartwright family had been laid to rest and sealed away in the basement. Sam wasn’t satisfied with the outcome.

“I don’t get why they suddenly started attacking, after all these years. You should have seen the rat bones in the basement,” said Sam, when the three of you were on your way to the other side of town. The Impala’s engine a tempting lullaby that you resisted, wanting to ignore sleep for as long as you could--even though you had the backseat all to yourself. Baby’s black leather seats soothed your frayed nerves, the familiar scent bringing a sense of safety and home.

Dean started to speculate on the vampires and Sam either ran with or shot down his brother’s theories. You had a few of your own and the conversation slowly shifted to whether you all should have breakfast first or head straight back to your motel rooms. No one said anything about what had happened to you back in that house. Sam and Dean treated you the same as they ever did: with kindness, affection and understanding. They had frozen before. Panicked. How could they judge you?

A few miles away from the Cartwright's former home, Sam called in an anonymous tip-off for a neighbor whom he had found dead in a nearby garden.

“Yeah my name’s-” Sam hung up and turned his cell off. “We got ‘em,” he stated and you could see the pleased smile on his face.

“Yes we did.” Dean smiled and nodded his head. “I think this calls for breakfast. So let’s head to that diner near the motel everyone in town’s been talking up.”

Sam turned a glance to you. “Think you can handle their fabled pancake special?”

“Does Dr Sexy have the lushest lashes on screen? I know so.”

Dean sniffed and in a fond, but mocking voice said, “I taught her well, Sam. You make a brother proud, Boo.”

Leaning forward, you ruffled Dean’s hair and earned his right hand swatting at yours. The after effects of what happened to you in that house lingered, but Dean and Sam made you feel like it didn’t matter. They saw you for you and refused to let your attacks define you. If they stopped taking you on hunts, you’d only go off by yourself and then they would be less safe. There’d been many times you’d saved them when they were knocked out or tied up.

That house was a crumbling mess, slowly dissolving in on itself, but you knew Dee and Sammy never saw you that way.

“Hey,” you spoke-up, voice still a little shaky, “do you two remember that one time with the banshee in that small town in Oregon? And that antiques dealer that definitely had a 19th century prototype for a-” Your words were lost to the horrified expressions on Dean and Sam’s faces.

“I thought we agreed never to talk about that,” Dean finally managed to say.

“I still can’t believe the banshee knocked both of you out with it.”

“Boo…” Dean warned.

“And it still worked.”

“I think I just lost my appetite,” said Sam.

Pulling the Impala into the diner’s lot, Dean raised his eyebrows at you. “You done?”

“Never.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find this story on [Tumblr here](http://dreamsfromthebunker.tumblr.com/post/135275679190/love-and-understanding). Kudos and comments are very welcome :)
> 
> I would like to note that I have little experience of panic attacks and that I hope this fic doesn’t do any disservice to those who do.


End file.
